The present invention relates to protection of essential wireless communication device applications from battery exhaustion and, more particularly, to methods and systems that provide a user broad flexibility in defining essential wireless communication device applications and the battery power reserved for such applications.
Wireless communication devices, such as mobile phones, personal data assistants and pocket PCs are being equipped with more and more collateral applications. For example, many recent vintage mobile phones support entertainment and social applications such as digital photography, music and video recording and playback and video gaming. Many of these collateral applications invoke multimedia technologies that consume substantial battery power. Use of these collateral applications can therefore easily result in a user inadvertently exhausting the battery of the wireless communication device and losing the ability to use core communication applications, such as telephone calling and text messaging. In some circumstances, a dead battery can prevent a user from sending or receiving emergency or other critical communications.
Attempts have been made to protect core communication applications of mobile electronic devices by reserving battery power for these applications. However, these attempts have fallen short. One prior approach disables activation of certain user preferences such as display backlight when battery power falls below a certain threshold. This approach does not adequately protect core communication applications since only certain user preferences are disabled. No action is taken to prevent a long-running or power-intensive collateral application from running the battery flat. Other prior approaches have not provided the user sufficient flexibility to define which applications the user regards as essential, power budgets for such applications or related settings. Moreover, prior approaches have generally failed to keep the user adequately informed about how much power is available to essential and nonessential applications, which can cause the user to inefficiently use available power in certain circumstances.